Geopolitics and Identity-Making in US Diasporic Chinese Churches

• In Event: 4366 - Section on Global and Transnational Sociology Refereed Roundtables (1 hour)
  In Refereed Roundtable 60min: 13. Race, Ethnicity and Identity in the Global and Transnational

Abstract

Using ethnographic and interview data, my paper analyzes how geopolitical relationship manifest at the community level in Chinese America Responding to Lien Pei-Te’s call to meaningfully disaggregate among the commonly “lumped together Chinese Americans,” I draw upon the experiences of specific groups of Chinese immigrants to the US, post-1949 migrants to Taiwan, pre-1949 migrants to Taiwan, and the People’s Republic of China (PRC) Chinese, in order to understand how boundary drawing occurs in their various communities but also consider how the act of being “lumped together” itself in the US context complicates identity formation. The year 1949 marks the communist victory in the PRC as well as the inaugural year of the Kuomingdang (KMT)-led Republic of China (ROC) in Taiwan. Carved out of these historical events, the contemporary social relations among these groups persist after their migration to the US, but they manifest differently in various domains of practice, including religious ones. As political relationships among states reorganizes their social relations, being Chinese and being Taiwanese take on different meanings in the US than in Asia. My paper prioritizes questions of how racial and ethnic meanings are transformed and thus, forwards a transnational understanding of Chinese America. The religious site offers what Carolyn Chen calls a “moral vocabulary” to articulate, contemplate, and, in some cases, justify these divides. Even within a Christian context, messages of inclusivity are not universal but redefined according to the political and social contexts. By not assigning a singular definition to Christian thought, my paper makes way for a theorization of an intersectional Christian identity.

Author

• Shirley Michelle Lung, The Johns Hopkins University